She’s not famed for her risqué publicity stunts or her barely-there sartorial choices. If anything, she’s a private individual (as far as film stars can be), who shies away from discussing her personal life and is more often seen wearing baggy jeans and an oversized jumper than she is wearing anything that borders on brazen.

Yet the usually conservative actress, with strict rules over her own exposure on film, has chosen to pose completely topless for Interview Magazine, naked but for a pair of wide-legged trousers and some three-quarter-length lacy gloves.

The spread has been shot by fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier for the magazine’s September issue, themed The Photographer’s issue, which is out on newsstands now.

And she is but one of six covers shot by a different photographer or team. The other five covers feature Nicole Kidman by Steven Klein, Naomi Campbell by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Amber Valletta by Craig McDean, Lea Seydoux by Peter Lindbergh and Daria Werbowy by Mikael Jansson.

She is also the same actress who publicly complained that her breasts had been digitally enhanced for a film poster, as well as in a Chanel fashion advert.

"For King Arthur, for a poster, they gave me these strange droopy tits," she said in an interview with Allure magazine in 2012.

"A - I don't have tits anyway, and B - they digitally made them, and I thought, Whoaaaaa! It's my face on that poster.

"I thought 'Well, if you're going to make me fantasy breasts, at least make perky breasts'."

She continued: "Normally the woman has to expose everything and the guy doesn't. Sex scenes in films - I'm quite rigorous about what gets exposed. No bottom half!

"I don't mind exposing my tits because they're so small - people really aren't that interested. It's much easier as you get older. You can say, 'No', 'Yes', 'No'."

The feminists among us may wish to point out her decision to pose topless could well be a statement of solidarity to the #FreeTheNipple campaign, as championed by the aforementioned Barbadian pop star, model Cara Delevingne and Scout Willis.

Willis was banned from Instagram for posting a photograph of a sweatshirt she designed featuring two topless women.